PSYCHOANALYTICAL METHODS

Psychoanalytical Methods

Psychoanalytical Methods

Introduction

Psychology is an extensive subject, where learning can be applied to all aspects of an individual and society. The name psychology derives from Greek, Psyche meaning the mind, soul, spirit, and Logos meaning study, (Gross, 2001, p4). This essay will look at how this relatively new subject has developed different approaches and theories throughout the years. Today, several different branches of psychology have also developed and this essay will show some insight into them.

Discussoin

Philosophers had been discussing behaviour of people and animals for many years but it was not until 1879 that William Wundt (1832-1920) applied science to this. William Wundt opened the first psychology lab at the University of Leipzig in Germany, and here he began to experiment with the mind, developing the school of structuralism and introspection. Wundt carried out experiments on himself, trying to analyse the structure of his own mental processes, attempting to identify the structure of conscious. The failure of this type of experimentation was that only the individual can observe their own mental processes and as everyone is different, results cannot be measured. William James (1842-1910) then developed functionalism, which looked as how the mind operated rather than how the processes were structured. Both were key features of how psychology has developed in the field, although functionalism became more dominant and lead the way forward.

In the 1900's Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) developed the psychoanalytical school. The foundations of Freud's theory were that most of the mind was unconscious and that the conscious part of the mind developed in the early years. The central statements of Freud's theory are,

Freud's original conception of the mind was that of the unconscious, the preconscious and the perceptual conscious, as Kahn states he further developed this into the Id, the ego and the superego (Kahn, 2002, p25). Freud believed that the Id controls our instincts; it controls the pleasure principle and demands satisfaction. It is part of the unconscious. The ego mediates between the unconscious and conscious and the superego is our conscience; it is what we learn through our parents and society and tries to invoke morality in our minds. The ego uses defence mechanism to protect the mind from the conflicts of the Id and the Superego, they come in the forms of repression, displacement, denial, reaction formation and projection. As Freud states, "the ego stands for reason and good sense, while the Id stands for untamed passions" (Kahn, 2002, p27). Freud also developed the psychosexual stages, which is the stages we go though as a child developing our minds, these stages are the oral stage(birth-18 months) children up until the age of 18 months who are dependant on their mouth for nourishment and attention, this develops as "the first source of pleasure" (Kahn, 2002, p42). The anal stage (18 months) then develops as the child discovers pleasure from the anal area and learns that it can release or withhold at this stage. The phallic stage (3 years) is the most important ...